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Trainer Tip: To reduce defensiveness and hurt feelings when talking to your partner about your sexual needs that haven't been met, keep the conversation focused on your needs, not her lack of skill, and make a very specific request. From there, you can both explore any shared needs, blocks, or support needed to bring you both closer to your needs.

Trainer Tip: To defuse anger and create space for resolution, hear the other person’s feelings and needs. If this practice is new to you, you're like to experience fear and resistance in trying it out. However, you'll be more likely to experience a powerful shift, and build your capacity, if you try it anyways.

In these exercises, you'll transform your urge to rebel with punishment or reward. Punishing can include withholding love or other necessities, attacking verbally with insults or name calling (directly or with others), giving a "dirty look," or attacking physically. With these exercises you'll allow space for your urge. You'll also explore needs, benefits, consequences, and lternatives.

Trainer tip: Be aware of your inner jackal chatter today and make a commitment to listen for the underlying needs they are trying to tell you about.

Trainer Tip: Mary offers 3 foundational tips for making requests: positivity, specificity and doability.

Trainer Tip: When they say "no", acknowledge what people are saying "yes" to. From there, you persist towards a resolution that values both party's needs, without demand. Persisting is when we try to meet needs by continuing to connect with another. Demanding is when we insist someone do something, or else face negative repercussions. Showing care and willingness to work with people can help them to want to collaborate and resolve conflict.

Trainer Tip: The better you connect with your child’s needs, the more you will defuse the power struggle. If he wants to behave in a way you don't like, start by understanding what's going on with him by making empathic guesses. Doing this out loud can expand your child’s emotional vocabulary and show that his needs matter to you, and build his trust. Once you learn what's going on with him, create a strategy that values both your needs.

Trainer Tip: With empathy, ponder one area of your life that you are unhappy with today. Consider whether you can take action to change the experience and meet your needs.

We invite you to dive into this voyage, where you and Robert will swim ever deeper into the Spiral of Life, coming face-to-face with your divine Life Force – that essential living energy that permeates all.